Bush Steps Back On Claims

President Wants Search For Illicit Weapons To Continue

January 28, 2004|By BOB KEMPER Special to the Daily Press

WASHINGTON — President Bush for the first time Tuesday appeared to back away from his once-emphatic claim that weapons of mass destruction would be found in Iraq, replacing flat declarations that the weapons existed with a more cautious call to allow inspectors to complete their task.

Bush said the Iraq Survey Group, the U.S. team looking for weapons in Iraq, must keep searching for evidence of weapons programs to determine how the administration's prewar claims about the threat posed by Iraq compare with the evidence on the ground.

"It's very important for us to let the Iraq Survey Group do its work so we can find out the facts and compare the facts to what was thought," Bush told reporters in the Oval Office after a meeting with Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski.

Bush defended U.S. intelligence agencies and his decision to invade Iraq, saying that even if no weapons are found, "there is no doubt in my mind the world is a better place without Saddam Hussein."

Bush has, in recent months, shrugged off questions about the weapons by saying they eventually would be found and offering as proof evidence found by U.S. inspectors of what he called "dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities." He focused attention instead on Saddam's brutality and the stability a democratic government in Iraq could bring to the Middle East.

The chief U.S. weapons inspector, David Kay, resigned last week, saying no evidence has been found to support claims that Saddam had stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons.

Moreover, Kay undermined administration claims that Iraq could have a nuclear bomb by the end of the decade when he found only the most rudimentary evidence of a nuclear weapons program. He also cast doubts on administration claims that Iraq had ties to terrorist groups such as al-Qaida.

"Their problem is that none of their claims has stood up to reality. They have spent $600 million and they have found nothing," said Ivo Daalder, a scholar at the Brookings Institution and co-author of a new book, "America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy."

The illicit weapons were the chief reason the U.S. had to intervene so quickly in Iraq, administration officials said before the war. Last March, Bush said, "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."

Republicans on Capitol Hill have begun blaming the CIA and other intelligence agencies for providing Bush with inaccurate information. But any effort to blame CIA Director George Tenet runs the risk of having the CIA counter with accusations that the administration used the intelligence selectively.

"They've got to be a little careful here about scapegoating," said Norm Ornstein, a scholar with the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. "If they upset the intelligence community, it could turn the focus on whether the administration sexed up the intelligence."

Democrats are calling for an independent investigation into the prewar intelligence and the administration's use of it, though there is little chance that such a review will be ordered by the Republican-controlled Congress. Democrats could gain additional ammunition, however, from a report the British government is expected to release today on whether Prime Minister Tony Blair misused intelligence to justify the war. Kay is scheduled to testify today on the issue before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Kay on Monday said Bush should not be blamed for exaggerating Iraq's capabilities before the war. The problem, he said, was a failure by the intelligence community in the U.S. and other countries to assess Iraq's activities correctly.

"Clearly, the intelligence that we went to war on was inaccurate, wrong," Kay said.